Task, formulaic language, and role play for developing ESL students’ academic language

Abstract

The effectiveness of task, formulaic language, and role play in facilitating uninhibited communication of ESL learners is beyond doubt. This quantitative empirical research employed a role play communicative assessment and a writing assessment to assess the efficacy of the combination of task, formulaic language, and role play, as a language learning strategy to teach cognitive academic language in English for Specific Purpose classroom of a university. The language ability acquired through brainstorming and reading sessions equipped the students for the task of describing a two-wheeler. The task which made use of the formulaic language led the engineering students to interact meaningfully and know the content for describing a two-wheeler and write the description in a coherent paragraph. The stimulated usage of academic language in a role play could scaffold the content and language learnt for successful retention for effective Oral Academic Presentation (OAP). Although the results cannot be generalised, students joining higher education in universities in ESL/EFL countries would be immensely benefitted by this kind of teaching method.

Project based Engineering Graphics Instruction in a Content and Language Integrated Flipped Classroom

“…Though certain members presented well and their individual score was good, because of the other members' insufficient contribution to the success of the group, very badly reflected in the accrued group marks. Grouping in a heterogeneous class is not a problem, but group assessment is (29) . When individual members' marks were accrued to make group mark, 2 groups failed because all the team members were either not able or not willing to contribute equally to the team's success.…”

Formulaic Language Use by Learners of English in Interlanguage Communication

“…Recently, researchers have become interested in the use of formulaic language by learners of English as a second language (ESL; Ebrahimi et al, 2021;Wang & Halenko, 2022). Studies have extensively examined the use of formulaic language in academic English writing (Chen & Baker, 2016;Leelasetakul, 2019;Narkprom & Phoocharoensil, 2022;Staples et al, 2013) and the effects of different teaching methods on developing formulaic language use by ESL learners (Ogawa, 2021;Rajeswaran, 2019). However, Staples and Fernández (2019) found that formulaic language has not been adequately investigated in relation to interlanguage pragmatics, particularly in spoken English discourse.…”